The House of Velvet and Glass (41 page)

His mood was pierced by a commotion breaking out near the front door, shouts and thumping of feet. Harlan raised his eyebrows, curious, without moving from his slouch. The other three men sat unperturbed, bent with intense attention over their game.

A slick-haired young man whom Harlan half recognized—what was his name, Peter?—burst into the card room, waving a newspaper, breathless, his face flushed.

“Well, they’ve gone and done it now!” he cried, rushing up to the foursome of bridge players. He flapped the newspaper open on the table, ignoring their protests at the interruption. “The unmitigated gall. I can’t believe it, I tell you. I just can’t believe it!”

More shouts and excited conversation thrummed through the club, and through the window in the street outside Harlan spotted a man and two young women clustering over a newspaper as well, bending their heads together and talking excitedly.

“What’s going on?” Harlan asked, stirred enough to lean forward and look at the headline splashed across the late edition. The other three card players joined him, their shoulders bumping into one another, a hand of hearts (look at all those trumps, a part of Harlan thought wistfully) scattered forgotten, like leaves, over the floor.

The headline blared
SAILED WITH SENSE OF DISASTER IMPENDING.

“They’ve torpedoed
Lusitania
. Torpedoed it! Damn thing went down in thirty minutes!”

“What?” Harlan asked, confused, as the other young men started to talk excitedly.

“Hard to believe these are the same people who brought us Goethe and Schiller,” Townsend remarked, unflappable as usual. “Guess it just goes to show you.” He didn’t go on to elaborate on what, specifically, that goes to show you, as the rest of the table was all talking over each other, rustling through the newspaper pages for more details.

“Torpedoed!” Bickering cried, cracking his knuckles with excitement. “But she’s an ocean liner! A civilian cruise ship! What could those damnable Huns be thinking?”

“Says here the embassy issued a warning before the ship departed last week. Reminded everyone that a state of war existed between Germany and her allies and England and her allies, and that the waters around the North Sea were patrolled by U-boats. They as good as promised the ship’d be bombed. As good as promised.”

“But it’s an ocean liner!” Bickering repeated. “What would they want to torpedo a bunch of vacationers for? How in God’s name could they possibly justify it?”

“Says here,” Peter went on, “that some of the more prominent people who’re set to sail on her received telegrams on the pier warning them not to go, signed with fictitious German names. Says here Alfred Vanderbilt just crumpled the telegram up and threw it aside.”

“That’s what any man would do,” one of the boys commented.

“But why would the Cunard people let her go, if the embassy sent out a warning the previous week? Seems to me you might want to pay attention when the German embassy notifies you they’ve got U-boats carrying torpedoes with your name on ’em.”

“Says here,” Peter continued, “that everyone thought the liner was safe. She could make twenty-five knots easy. They thought for sure she could outrun ’em if they tried to make good. But nobody really thought they’d do it.”

“How could they?” Bickering said, fingernails digging into the tabletop. Harlan reflected that he might never have seen Bickering look so upset before. Bickering was never one for politics; he cared nothing for his profession. He treated all the girls he’d seen with magnanimous indifference. He lost money and won it with precisely the same level of detached bemusement, as if the details of his life were all part of the same grand joke. Now the young man’s face was starting to burn red. “I don’t see how Wilson can keep us neutral. Not after this . . . this . . .”

“Outrage,” Townsend finished. Still calm, unmussed, and calculating, but clearly even Townsend was upset.

Harlan sat, benumbed with shock. A shock that felt almost welcome in its familiarity. In fact, Harlan could barely remember a time without it. An elegant ocean liner, sunk. Torpedoed by a German submarine this time. Men. Women. Children. Thirty minutes, the paper said. All over in less than thirty minutes.

His eyes widened as he pictured the explosion’s impact shaking through the ribs of the vessel, the deck sharply listing, moving like some hideous heaving sea animal under all the passengers’ feet. Harlan heard the screams in his ears of passengers scrambling for higher ground, of tables turned over and glassware shattering. He imagined with perfect clarity the roiling panic of people clawing to get into lifeboats, trampling over one another, a lifeboat swinging free from its hoist and crashing through the windows of the dining room in an explosion of splintered glass.

“Was anyone saved?” he heard himself ask. At the center of his imagination—the still point of his cold and miserable shock, the image that haunted his sleep—stood his sister and his mother, arms knotted together in each other’s clothes, faces stained with weeping, with ice cold water rolling long tongues toward their feet.

“Anyone?” he asked again, in a smaller voice. “Anyone saved at all?”

The young men didn’t heed his question, instead bellowing over one another in self-righteous indignation, loudly announcing their thoughts for what ought to be done to the Germans now that the States would have to enter the war.

Another thumping of feet approached, and Rawlings appeared in the doorway of the card room, his pipe in his hand. “You fellows hear the news?” he cried, before spotting Harlan.

A long moment of frigid silence descended on the assembled company as the men clustered around the card table exchanged rapid, knowing glances. Harlan settled his hands on the armrests of his chair, gripping them, swallowing, a rush of guilt and anxiety bubbling up in his chest. Rawlings stepped back, as though reconsidering entering the room. The men all waited, watching, wondering who would be first to speak.

A shadow crossed over Rawlings’s face, followed by one of his hands wiping across his eyes. Then he slid the pipe between his teeth, thrust his hands in his pockets, and moved over to where Harlan was sitting. Without intending to, Harlan slouched lower in his chair, keeping a weather eye on the approaching young man.

Rawlings reached Harlan, and the other boys all stood up as a body, stepping back to give the two room. Rawlings cleared his throat, looking at his shoes.

“Look here, Allston,” he began.

Bickering coughed, nervous from tension. Peter, not the usual companion of the boys, started to say “But what . . .” and Townsend silenced him with a quick “Tsssst.” Pale Whiskers, whoever he was, watched the proceedings as though he were at a baseball game, his arms folded across his chest.

“Rolly,” Harlan acknowledged, looking up at him, defiant, but only just.

The other boy paused, hazarding a glance at Harlan’s face. “How’s that lip of yours? It mending all right?”

“I guess it is,” Harlan allowed.

Rawlings nodded, looking relieved. His hand wandered up to fiddle with the pipe at his mouth, which, when he withdrew it for a long look into its bowl, Harlan observed to be more chewed on the mouthpiece than usual.

“Glad to hear it,” Rawlings said finally. “Glad to hear it.” Another pause while Harlan waited, bringing a fingertip to his scabbed split lip.

“I’ll tell you,” Rawlings said, flexing his hand. “Just about broke my knuckle, there.”

Harlan didn’t say anything, waiting.

“Way I see it, Allston,” Rawlings continued, voice tight with embarrassment. “We’ve known each other a long time, and—”

When he saw where Rawlings was going, Harlan let out a sigh of relief. “See here, Rolly,” he said. “I should never’ve said that. About your sister. You know I think she’s a fine girl. And nothing at all like—like I implied.”

Rawlings looked at him, stricken.

Harlan shifted in his seat, uncomfortable under the judging gaze of the other young men.

“You’ve got to know I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just running my mouth off. Like a jackass. You know that, right? Rolly?”

After weighing what Harlan said, the other young man nodded, and stuck out his hand. Harlan got to his feet and took it, bringing in his other hand as well to clasp them together.

“Okay. I—I know,” Rawlings said. “And I’m sorry about all that . . . that business.” He gestured with his chin to Harlan’s battered face. “But I couldn’t very well let it stand, could I? I mean, could I? You didn’t give me much choice, you know.”

“Frankly,” Harlan said with a half-smile, “I never thought you had it in you. I’ve got you to thank for this new shape my nose’s in, huh?”

The group of clubmen watching this exchange let out a collective sigh of relief. The two former combatants smiled at each other, hands still clasped together. Then the smiles broadened into grins, and they flung their arms around each other in a quick, tight embrace. The boys watching their exchange had to restrain themselves from breaking out in applause. Instead they muttered a few phrases of hearty approval, slapping backs and laughing.

“It needed the help,” Rawlings joked, elbowing Harlan, who cried, “Oh, did it? You bounder,” to a round of guffaws.

The group then bent themselves back to the newspaper spread around the card table, gesticulating with excitement over their plans to travel across the Atlantic and wreak revenge on Germany as soon as they possibly could.

Sibyl sat in the front drawing room, attempting to knot the thread on the underside of her needlepoint, and failing. She tried again, bending closer and squinting her eyes for a better view. She was on the point of getting it when her hands trembled, slightly, and the needle fell from her grasp.

“Drat,” she muttered under her breath. At her feet, Baiji waddled past, pausing to tongue the end of Sibyl’s shoe to see if it might taste as good as a peanut shell. It didn’t, and so the bird continued on his meditative way, shimmering tail trailing behind him.

“You’d better not chew the carpet again,” Sibyl remarked to the passing macaw. “I’ll make you into a hat after all. You see if I won’t.”

As she said this the pocket door opened and Dovie flounced in, a fashion magazine tucked under her arm. She flopped into the armchair across from Sibyl and stuck her feet out straight in front of her with a long sigh.

“Feeling any better?” Sibyl asked without looking up.

“Mmmm? Oh,” Dovie said, waving her hand in dismissal. “Sure. Just ate something funny, I guess.” She paused, and Sibyl didn’t respond. “You know, I don’t think that Betty of yours likes me so much.”

Sibyl glanced up from her work and regarded the young woman draped over the chair across from her. Dovie’s face was faintly green still, but her color did seem to be coming back.

“Oh? What makes you say that?”

“Nothing in particular,” Dovie said, with a strange look on her face. “Just a feeling. She won’t look at me when I try to talk to her. And I don’t think— Well. You all seem to enjoy her food more than I do, is all.”

Sibyl laid her work in her lap and leaned back in her chair, thinking about Betty Gallagher. It was true that she’d seemed more curt than usual when Sibyl went to the kitchen to consult her on dinner plans. Once, Sibyl enjoyed loitering in the kitchen to soak up the details of Betty’s various affairs, which were always touched with drama and intrigue. But she’d been less good humored, and more likely to snap at the kitchen girls lately. Sibyl had gotten into the habit of keeping her conversations with the cook to a minimum over the past few weeks, if only to spare the sculleries Betty’s wrath.

She was on the point of saying this to Dovie when the two women were interrupted by the slamming open of the front door, followed by the sound of pounding feet. Harlan burst through the door into the parlor, the stubborn forelock of hair flopping into his eyes. He panted, out of breath, and his eyes sparkled with a new kind of determination that Sibyl didn’t recall ever having seen in her otherwise laconic younger brother.

“Harley!” Dovie turned and gasped, seeing his excitement. “Why, what’s happened?” She rose to her feet, balancing one hand on the back of the chair.

Troubled by the sudden outburst of excitement, Baiji squawked, flapped his wings, and returned with a leisured soar to the hat rack in the inner parlor.

“You haven’t heard?” Harlan burst, rushing across the room to take Dovie’s hands in his.

“Heard what?” Sibyl asked from behind her needlepoint at the same time that Dovie cried, “No, my darling! What is it?”

“The Germans. There’ll be no way we can keep out of the war now.”

“War!” Dovie exclaimed, looking confused.

“What’s happened, Harlan?” Sibyl frowned, dropping her work into her lap. She didn’t like seeing him so. . . . Sibyl struggled to find the right word to describe Harlan’s attitude, and her stomach rolled over when she realized that this was
enthusiasm
, what she was seeing in her younger brother. He was excited. Thrilled. He was almost . . .

Happy.

“Look here,” he said, eyes shining with excitement as he pulled the newspaper from under his arm. He hurried to the coffee table, and the three of them gathered around as he spread it out for them to read. The paper was black with two-inch headlines, of which she caught the words
TERROR
and
SEAS
in the commotion. “I tell you, Wilson’s mad if he thinks we can stay neutral now. Soon enough they’ll get a real taste of what we’ve got to offer, you see if they won’t.”

“But what—” Sibyl started to say, but she was interrupted by the sound of a man speaking from the doorway.

“
Lusitania
,” the man announced. Harlan, Sibyl, and Dovie all looked up at once in response to the sound and discovered Benton Derby standing in the drawing room entryway, hands propped on either side of the door jamb, his face ashen. He looked as though he had been kicked in the stomach. “They torpedoed it.”

“Torpedoed?” Sibyl breathed. “You mean, it sank?”

“In eighteen minutes,” the professor confirmed. “Broad daylight.”

“But—” Dovie started to say.

“How many passengers were there?” Sibyl asked, her voice hollow in her ears.